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^^^ 



A MEMORIAL 




JOHN S. C. ABBOTT, D.D, 



Rev. HORATIO O. LADD. 



" Honest love- honest sorro^Vt 
Honest work /or the day^ honest hope for the morrow."' 



BOSTON : 

A. WILLIAMS & CO., 

283 Washisgto.v Strbbt. 

1878. 






il 




E T Stuart Bnfi Soato: 



^ 



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L y-/A-c</f ^'^^ ,lo-u^t^ 



Jf^/ia^ ff, 



'ri^^. 



A MEMORIAL 



JOHN S. C. ABBOTT, D.D. 



i/?-^ 

^b' 



Rev. HORATIO O. LADD. 



" Honest lovfj honest sorrowf 
Hottest work /or the day^ honest hoJ>e for ike tnorrozu." 



BOSTON : 

A. WILLIAMS & CO., 

a.%2 Washington Street. 

X87S. 






PARISHIONERS, PUPILS, AND FRIENDS 

OF 

Rev, John S, C, Abbott 

THIS 

^def Pemorial 

/S RESPECTFULLY DEDICATED, 

BY ONR WHO HAS GRATEFULLY SHARED WITH THEM THE 

GUIDANCE OF HIS COUNSELS, THE INSTRUCTION AND CHARM OF HIS WRITINGS, 

AND THE INSPIRING EXAMPLE OF HIS DILIGENT LIFE 

AND CHRISTIAN FAITH. 



Hopkinton, Mass., 

Dec, 20, 1S77. 



JOHN S. C. ABBOTT. 



John Stevens Cabot Abbott was born in Brunswick, Maine, 
Sept. i8, 1805. He died at Fair Haven, Connecticut, June 17, 
1877, in his seventy-second year. 

Some time in the seventeenth century, the ancestor of the 
Abbot family, who was a descendant of Maurice Abbot, young- 
est brother of George Abbot, Archbishop of Canterbury from 
1610 to 1633, emigrated to New England. With the proclivi- 
ties of eminent English families in that age, his children became 
possessors of many thousand acres of land in the district of 
Maine, and were honored among the families of the colonial 
period. One of these children resided at the time of his death 
in Brunswick, Maine. His landed estates were inherited by 
Jacob Abbot, his son, who was already married to Betsey Ab- 
bot, a cousin in another branch of the family, living in Con- 
cord, New Hampshire. 

The family of Jacob and Betsey Abbot comprised five sons — 
Jacob, John S. C, Gorham D., Samuel P., Charles E. — and two 
daughters. Of the sons, Jacob and John became specially dis- 
tinguished as authors, Gorham, Samuel, and Charles, as educa- 
tors ; while the daughters, Sallucia, and Clara, the widow of 
Rev. Elbridge Cutler, have shared not only the literary and edu- 
cational labors of their brothers, but the reverent love and 
esteem, for many years, of a large circle of neighbors and friends 
in Maine. 

It was one of the noted families of that young but enterpris- 
ing State at the beginning of the present century. Separated 
but a few years before from Massachusetts, Maine, with its 
dense forests, enchanting valleys, bold mountains, and island- 
studded bays, with their twenty-five hundred miles of glistening 



beaches, rugged shores, and deep and well-guarded harbors, was 
a more attractive home for the venturesome sons of the colo- 
nies, or of Old England, than are now, to dwellers on Atlantic 
shores, the broad, rich plains of Kansas, or the prairies and 
slopes of the incipient States under the shadow of the Rocky 
Mountains. 

John was the third child in this family. He owed his name to 
personal associations, with which, however, he and his brothers 
subsequently trifled somewhat, by increasing the letters in the 
family name. Three or four years after his birth his father 
removed to Hallowell, Maine. Here his boyhood was passed 
in the clear frosty climate and amid the picturesque scenery 
of the Kennebec valley. The grandeur of the mountains of 
Maine, the wild scenes of its unbroken forests and lonely riv- 
ers, the Indian tribes roving in small bands among the settle- 
ments, the invigorating winters and Siberian snows, joined with 
the hardy virtues and intelligence of Puritan life in and around 
his home, left indelible impressions on his very sensitive nature. 
He entered, with the zest of an ardent temperament, into the 
scenes that rose around him like the enchantments of a story- 
teller. His nature, imbued as it was with the warm tints of an 
Oriental clime, had also the hardihood to be stimulated rather 
than stunted by the rigors of the Maine climate, so that he 
drank in the pure delights of that new country, and with 
quickened fancy participated in the sports that could wrest 
enjoyment from harsh winds and drifting snows. There be 
first caught the inspiration of glowing descriptions in histories 
of American pioneer life, and prepared the way in his soul for 
the intense picturing, in later years, of the battles of Napoleon 
with the frosts and avalanches of the Alps or on the snow- 
covered plains of Russia. 

In Reminiscences of my Childhood, written by Dr. Abbott 
the last year of his life, the spirit of the boy is still manifest in 
his weakened body, as he revives those early days. 

" I often recall with great exhilaration those crisp and frosty 
mornings of winter, which invested my childhood's home with 
indescribable charms. I was never cold ; the warm mittens 
which my mother knit me were amply sufficient, with ordinary 
clothing, to protect the frame through whose veins youthful 



blood was leaping. My loving dog would accompany me, bound- 
ing over the smooth expanse, where the snow was five feet 
deep, concealing fences and stumps, and all minor roughnesses 
of the ground. The crust was often so hard that a horse could 
almost gallop over it without breaking through. Towzer seemed 
to have found his heaven of delight. When upon my steel-shod 
sled I would glide with railroad speed down some declivity, per- 
haps a quarter of a mile in length, Towzer would bound after 
me, happy as his master, with his joyous barkings waking the 
echoes of field and forest. 

" After a heavy fall of feathery snow, creating drifts of from 
ten to twenty feet in depth, who can imagine the delight we 
boys felt in jumping from the roof of house or shed, and sinking 
almost out of sight in the soft, white, yielding cloud which had 
descended from the skies, and which had spread itself out 
beneath our feet, apparently for our special fun .' Burrowing 
in those grand drifts on the sides of the numerous gullies and 
ravines in Hallowell, we were in the habit of carving out, like 
the inhabitants of Petra from the solid rock, halls and corridors, 
which enchanted us like the creations of the Arabian story- 
tellers. In these rooms we would have carpets of straw, and 
even built fires, with snow chimneys to conduct the smoke 
away, thus imitating the ice-cabins of the Esquimaux. We 
built snow forts and laid in supplies of snow-ball ammunition ; 
some of these balls, as large as one's head, we regarded as 
bomb-shells, to be hurled down upon the heads of the assail- 
ants. The antagonistic parties generally consisted of imagi- 
nary British and American troops. The fortress would be 
stormed and defended with wonderful valor." 

Mr. Abbott has described frontier and Indian life on many 
hundred pages of his histories. With more sympathy and admi- 
ration than is usual, he pictures the American Indian waging 
unequal warfare with the white man, who was ever encroaching 
upon his domains and exciting his fury. Probably the peaceful 
Penobscot tribes that in summer used to hover about the villages 
of Maine impressed him more favorably as to the untutored sav- 
age than would now a band of Sioux on the Western frontier, 
after half a century's demoralizing contact with the American 
citizen. He often in his boyhood visited the Indian wigwams 



8 

on Winthrop Hill, in Hallowell, then covered with a dense for- 
est. These wigwams, constructed of tall saplings, sheathed 
with birch bark, carpeted with soft hemlock twigs and the skins 
of bears and otters, and lighted by a cheerful fire in the centre, 
attracted his childish fancy. There he spent many silent, 
dreamy hours, " listening to the musical and monotonous clat- 
ter of the Indian women, as, with nimble fingers, they wove 
their brilliantly colored baskets from thin strips of the ash-tree, 
or watching their babes, silent as mummies in their framework 
caskets, gazing with black, brilliant, staring eyes, without a 
motion or sound, upon the scene around them." 

The author of The Mother at Home, and the eloquent delin- 
eator of womanly virtues in Marie Antoinette, Mary Queen 
of Scots, Josephine, and the royal circles of every European 
nation of old Rome and Greece, as well as eminent Christian 
households of every age whether of noble name or untitled 
worth in his own land, early had implanted in his mind a high 
ideal of maternal character and domestic peace. He was in a 
Puritan home of seventy or eighty years ago, but no stern or 
unfeeling parents there inspired children with terror or cast 
gloom upon their young hearts. His father, whom many still 
living can remember as one of the most cheerful, genial, and 
loving of men, could always omit the harsh word to wife and 
children, but never remitted the morning and evening worship 
or forgot the blessing and return of thanks at each meal. That 
revered mother had a season each day when she prayed for 
each child by name, and by her gentle words and loving com- 
panionship awakened in her children a fervor of devotion 
which has illumined their long and useful lives. Sunday 
schools were scarcely thought of then, but both those parents 
were sweet singers, and the Sabbath was sacredly observed by 
attendance at church, the singing and repeating of choice hymns 
and the catechism, as the seven children gathered to receive 
lessons not only for a mother's hearing, but to gild dark hours 
in their future, when oppressed by the languor and solitudes of 
enfeebled age. Thus early taught the value of integrity and 
piety, those children knew that for them to be Christians, and 
struggle all their days with adversity, was in their parents' 
choice and prayer for them, " better than to have all the honors 



of genius and all the wealth of millionnaircs lavished upon them 
without piety." 

Yet there was social light and cheer about that Puritan home 
which could hardly be credited were we to trust the represen- 
tations of so many other New England households in history 
or fiction. Kindred memories stir in many of our hearts, and 
we look with all the more pleasure on these autumnal touches 
of the bright picture of his early days : — 

" Hallowell was a social place. There were many parties. 
The simple entertainment of tea, coffee, and cake was prepared 
by the lady of the house, aided by her hired help. There was 
neither dancing nor card-playing. There was sufficient cul- 
ture, with both gentlemen and ladies, for them to enjoy a couple 
of hours of conversation. Our parlor, with its floor painted 
yellow, with its bookcase, tall mahogany clock, shining brass 
andirons, and truly splendid fire of rock maple blazing on the 
hearth, and lighted with mould candles, presented to my mind a 
picture of elegance which was not surpassed in subsequent 
years by the splendors of the saloons of the Tuileries, blazing 
with their myriads of wax-lights. These parties almost invari- 
ably broke up at about nine o'clock, and at ten all the candles 
were blown out. 

" Our mothers often got up parties for us little children, between 
the ages of five and twelve. We went at six and left at nine. 
My father would not only join with us in playing hunt the 
slipper and blind man's buff, but with his bass-viol would play 
for us skipping over the floor in what we called a dance. 
Sometimes one of the older boys would favor us with the music 
of the flute. The world has made great advances since then, 
but I do not think it has made progress in social enjoyment. 
Never did children have richer pleasures than we enjoyed in 
our Puritan home. Undoubtedly there were wretched homes 
then as now. Undoubtedly there were then, as now, professing 
Christians who exemplified in their conduct everything that 
was hateful and of bad report. But there were many other 
families whose loving hearts gilded the hours of this earthly 
life. I could mention many names. These mothers, who joined 
in the sports around the glowing rock-maple fire, were loved by 
us children with an afi'ection that can never die. And these 



lO 

mothers, without an exception which I can recall to mind, were 
what are called Evangelical Christians. They met every 
Thursday afternoon to pray that God would convert their sons 
and daughters." 

No father ever more imbued his sons with the practical value 
of cheerfulness than did Jacob Abbot, the venerated father of 
this family. " Squire Abbot," said his pastor, " had a remark- 
able talent for being happy." He sometimes took his sons into 
the romantic wilds of the upper country of Maine, where, in 
the townships of Weld, Temple, Madrid, and the region of Old 
Blue Mountain, he owned large tracts of land. Overtaken with 
cold, wet storms ere the journey was ended, or sheltered in the 
settlers' cabins that had always a welcome for him, while the 
tempests raged terrifically around them, he cheerily taught 
them that it was not the comforts of the fireside but the early 
endurance of hardships that could make out of his boys efficient 
men. It was by such insights into the log-cabins of the hardy 
Maine settlers, and drenching rides over rough and gloomy 
roads, through the dense forests and over the ridges of that 
rocky State, that the boy early caught the gleams which lured 
his pen to describe so often the trials of the Pilgrims in his 
Miles Standish, and the hardships and journeys of Western 
adventurers and frontiersmen in La Salle, De Soto, Daniel 
Boone, and a dozen other equally vivid accounts of early Amer- 
ican history. In the associations of his childhood was also 
another element that fostered both Mr. Abbott's literary taste 
and his marked admiration for the culture and social life in the 
ranks of nobility which he afterwards delighted to describe in 
the courts and castles of the kingdoms of the Old World. The 
Abbots were on intimate terms with two families who had 
brought with them to the banks of the Kennebec the refine- 
ment and tastes, with some of the exclusive tendencies, of the 
best society of England. One of these families gave their 
name to the flourishing and beautifid town of Gardiner, where 
they had received a very extensive grant of land. There, when 
the banks of the Kennebec and its tributaries were covered 
with primitive forests of pine, they had established lumber and 
grain mills for the convenience of the settlers ; yet they lived 
themselves, by right of birth and custom, in the style of wealthy 



II 

British gentry. Another noted family, the Vaughans, consist- 
ing of three brothers, who liad sought relief on these shores 
from the annoyances which their opinions had brought to them 
while holding high position in Kngland, had occupied kind four 
miles above Gardiner at Hallovvell. 

These distinguished families exerted a strong influence on 
the people who settled around them. Their buildings were 
models of economical architecture. Their courteous and unas- 
suming manners won the confidence of the community, which 
was thus attracted towards them, rather than alienated by their 
wealth and gentility. Having through avowed sympathy with 
the colonists in the Revolutionary struggle incurred the dis- 
pleasure of their acquaintance in England, they zealously en- 
gaged here in promoting the institutions which would elevate 
the people with whom they had cast their lot. They united 
extensive learning with religion and purity of life. Hallowell 
Academy became celebrated for its high attainments through 
their liberality and wise supervision. There, with the children 
of the more influential families of the town, Mr. Jacob Abbot's 
sons were first educated, while the choice library of the 
Vaughans, containing over twelve thousand volumes, was open 
to these boys, who were to furnish with their own facile pens 
treasured libraries for the children of unnumbered homes in 
America and Old England. 

The Puritan pastor, Rev. Dr. Gillett, must not be omitted 
from a view of that Hallowell home. A tall, slender, scholarly 
looking man in black broadcloth, linen bands, and black silk 
gloves in the pulpit, he could chase his little daughters at hide 
and seek in his beautiful garden, while their playmates clam- 
bered on his shoulders in their play. With the rhetorical 
elegance which his fastidious taste imparted to all his public 
teaching, and an attractive voice which won attention from old 
and young, this pastor did much to shape the minds of those 
children for their widely reaching work on others. 

It must be acknowledged that a rare combination of influ- 
ences fitted the subject of this memorial for his successful 
career in authorship and ministerial labor. Well might he say 
at the close of his life, " I esteem it the greatest blessing of my 
life that I was cradled in the home of a Puritan father and 
mother." 



12 

Jacob Abbot, Esq., returned to Brunswick with his family 
in 1819, to educate his sons at Bowdoin College. John was then 
a boy of fourteen years, and Jacob had already been graduated. 
John entered college in the famous class of 1825. Its members 
became distinguished in nearly all the professions. The names 
of Longfellow, Hawthorne, Cheever, and Abbott achieved a 
national reputation, and have been entered upon the lasting 
memorials of American literature. The honor and memory of 
their Alma Mater and of their class will be perpetuated in 
" Morituri Salutamus," one of the most celebrated and elegant 
poems that Longfellow has written. This was a memorial of 
their half-century class-meeting at Bowdoin College in 1875, 
which excited the interest of the whole country. 

Mr. Abbott was one of the youngest members of his class. 
Nothing specially marked his four years in college, except the 
universal esteem and favor with which he was regarded. His 
uniform kindness and courtesy, and outspoken sympathy with 
all that was honorable, honest, and upright, made him a great 
favorite with his classmates, while his scholarship, though above 
the average, never made him the mark of envy. So noticeable 
was his character in these respects that one of his classmates, 
Hon. S. P. Benson, who had himself honored that class as an 
eminent lawyer and member of Congress from Maine, at the 
memorial meeting already mentioned, gave this exceptional 
testimony: "John never did a mean thing, he never said a 
coarse thing, he never had an enemy while he was in college." 

The following somewhat curious incident illustrates the un- 
certain promises of the college period for a young man's future. 
Longfellow and Abbott were on the best terms as classmates 
and friends, both being young and of congenial temperaments. 
Having decided literary tendencies, it was good-naturedly pro- 
posed by some one that they should each write a poem under 
given circumstances, and a committee of the class be appointed 
to decide upon the merits of these productions. Accepting 
the proposal in good faith, the two young men prepared for the 
Olympic contest. As the two classmates, in their long literary 
careers, never afterward came into competition, it will not be 
ungracious to record that the laurel was given to Abbott. It 
was his last attempt at verse-making. He might have taken 



heart for a new trial, if he had known the lasting veneration 
and fame which was awaiting, in the future, the most loved and 
celebrated poet in America. It might be more difficult now, 
however, alike for the severest critics and most ardent admirers 
of the works of each, to judge whether the poet or the historian 
has put the most history into poetry. 

After graduating at Bowdoin, Mr. Abbott went to Amherst, 
Mass., as principal of the academy in that town. He had not 
chosen a profession, but had thought earnestly, and some- 
times with intense anxiety, upon the life before him. He had 
pursued a blameless course in college, but it had not been a 
professedly Christian life. Parental example and training had 
strongly enforced upon his childhood practical Christianity. 
He had reverenced religion in his young manhood and rendered 
prayerful obedience to its behests, without throwing the influ- 
ence of an open confession of Christ into his college compan- 
ionship. 

At Amherst it was necessary that the exercises of school be 
opened with prayer. Mr. Abbott quietly took up the duty 
from the force of his early training, to do, at any cost, what was 
right. From that time his life was steadily and consistently 
conformed to the precepts of Christ, That year he united 
with the Congregational Church at Amherst, and turned his 
thoughts resolutely to preparation for the ministry which he 
had often previously contemplated. He began his theological 
studies at Andover Seminary in September, 1826. 

During the second year of the seminary course, Mr. Abbott 
engaged in missionary labors along the southern shore of 
Cape Cod, organizing Sunday schools. This was a new form 
of missionary enterprise, to the importance and efficiency of 
which the churches had but recently awakened. 

Returning by the way of New Bedford, he then formed an 
engagement of marriage with Miss Jane Williams Bourne, 
with whom he had maintained an intimate acquaintance from 
boyhood. Her father, Mr. Abner Bourne, formerly an English 
importer of Boston, had resided in Brunswick for ten years as 
superintendent of a cotton manufactory, and was a highly re- 
spected citizen. Through the association of their families, the 
acquaintance of youth had grown to an attachment, which was 



14 

to unite them in the love and service of a long and eventful 
life. Mrs. Abbott shared the pastorate and literary labors of 
her husband with unremitted devotion, and still, with seven of 
their ten children, survives him. 

Mr. Abbott graduated at Andover Seminary in 1829. 
Among his well-known classmates were Nehemiah Adams, 
J. W. Chickering, George Punchard, and George Trask. 

A pastoral charge awaited him immediately after his gradua- 
tion. Having received a hearty call to the Central Calvinistic 
Church at Worcester, Mass., he was there ordained and settled, 
after a few months' ministry, on Jan. 28, 1 830. Prominent 
among the members and supporters of this newly established 
church was Daniel Waldo, Esq., who, with his family, were 
held by the pastor in close friendship and lifelong esteem. 
Mr. Abbott was married in September, 1830, and went to meet, 
with his young wife, the often-described experiences of an 
Orthodox pastorate in Masschusetts fifty years ago. With 
great flexibility of character, a kind and loving disposition, and 
an attractive style of preaching, the pastor and no less his 
warm-hearted wife soon won many friends. It was with the 
great regret of his church and congregation that his pastorate 
was there terminated by the prostration of Mr. Abbott under 
an attack of bronchitis, which unfitted him for work for more 
than a year. 

But almost simultaneously with his ministry, began that 
career in authorship which constituted a large part of his 
earthly labors. A course of week-day lectures to the maternal 
association of his parishioners, on parental life and duties, had 
been received with much favor. They had drawn their practi- 
cal wisdom from the memories of the remarkable homes with 
which he had been conversant. A previous successful venture 
with a little story for children, in book form, had made him 
mindful of other hearers than his own congregation. It oc- 
curred to him that these lectures would be useful to a larger 
circle of parents and homes, and lyider the title of Tlie 
Mother at Home, he offered them for publication. Few books 
were printed in those days, and the fact that they supplied 
the people's wants, rather than the reputation of publishers 
or the skill of subscription agents, gave them wide circu- 



lation. There was found to be a remarkable demand for this 
little volume, which the publisher had liesitatingly accepted. 
Ten thousand copies were sold in six months, and through an 
unknown number of reprints in this country and England, and 
translations into most of the languages of Europe and into 
some of those of Asia, for the use of missionaries, it has had 
an immense circulation. It may be truthfully said that this 
remarkable book, with a similar one which immediately followed 
it in 1834, was transcribed from the author's own heart, where 
it had been written for the world in early years by the honored 
parents in the home in which they had so successfully applied 
religious principles to the rearing of children without the viola- 
tion of natural instincts. 

Mr. Abbott had now fully entered upon his life service in the 
threefold capacity in which his influence and usefulness were 
e.xerted. Leaving here the narrative which this memorial has 
presented thus far, we gather the effects of his life into the 
three lines of activity into which, with varying intensity, his 
energies were concentrated. These were, the ministry of 
religious truth as a pastor, as an educator, and as an author in 
history and biography. 

Mr. Abbott held during his ministerial work five different 
pastorates. From 1S29 to 1834 he retained his first church at 
Worcester, Mass. From 1835 ^'^ 1841 he was settled over the 
Eliot Church in Roxbury, Mass. ; and from 1841 to 1844, over the 
Congregational Church in Nantucket, Mass. He was pastor of 
the Howe Street Church, New Haven, Conn., from 1862 to 1867; 
and acting pastor of the Second Church in Fair Haven, Conn, 
from 1870 to 1874. During the interval from 1850 to 1862, 
while engaged in literary work, he also ministered as stated 
supply to three other churches, in Freeport and Farmington, 
Maine, and Cheshire, Conn. 

The ministerial labors of forty years were thus divided among 
eight different churches. In the first half of this century in 
Congregational churches, the same period would ordinarily have 
been filled by two or three pastorates ; there have been not a 
few single settlements that have included more years of service. 
The greater usefulness of such protracted ministrations is an 
open question in the history of most of our American churches. 



lO 

Mr. Abbott was not fitted, either in his own temperament or 
in the special aims and character of his preaching, for long-con- 
tinued labor in one parish. He was quick in his sympathies, 
sanguine in his disposition, and versatile in his tastes and powers 
of illustrating truth, but also very susceptible to the influence 
of new scenes and faces. He quickly awakened interest in his 
preaching by the simplicity of his ideas of religion, united with 
great freedom of illustration. His style of expression, through 
a very active imagination, was frequently too florid for the studi- 
ous and critical among his large audiences, but by this greater 
numbers were attracted, and at the same time all were im- 
pressed with his earnestness on the one point of a personal ac- 
ceptance of salvation by Jesus Christ. As his varied literary 
labors and habits of work indicated, he was constitutionally 
fond of change, nor did his health, several times impaired and 
shattered by intense toil, allow the monotonous strain of pas- 
toral responsibility and toil for many years in one field. 

Dr. Abbott's preaching did not tend to the philosophy of 
religion. He had no special delight in speculative theology. 
He cared more for the principles of practical piety than for 
theories. He was not a metaphysican, but he was a sincere 
Christian. He loved especially to hold up the religion of Jesus 
Christ as a solace for the innumerable sorrows of human 
hearts. In this he ministered most effectively to multitudes out 
of his own rich experience. He believed and taught that the 
words of Christ and His inspired followers were the only safe 
guide to men, a rebuke to self-living, and the only true light to 
salvation for lost souls. The word of God revealed to him 
eternal realities, which he accepted with unquestioning faith. 
He rapturously embraced in the gospel the hopes of heaven, 
in the realistic forms that are but shadows of what is earthly and 
finite to other minds. He nevertheless made his hearers share 
his longings for the fellowship of the saints of all ages in the 
glorious home of the redeemed, which he ardently and con- 
fidently anticipated as the rest of his eager soul. 

In his sermons to young men, — to whom he was very at- 
tractive in his ministry, — he drew many fine illustrations from 
his biographical and historic studies, as he argued with them 
on the reasonableness of a Christian faith and character. 



17 

During the last ten years, he was wont to address them with 
all the affection and in the name of a father. Stirring them 
by his paternal warnings from the wrecks and failures of illus- 
trious characters, witii which he was so famihar, or inciting 
them by their grand deeds and virtues, he led many young 
men to be followers of Jesus, and to choose eternal life for 
their portion. 

As a pastor, Mr. Abbott never failed to inspire love and 
confidence among his people. He was very sensitive to the 
coldness or discourtesy of his parishioners, but usually con- 
cealed it and sought every means to overcome it. He was 
naturally a peacemaker. He hated a quarrel and even a discus- 
sion. He would avoid it if possible, and defer action, but was 
very persistent in his opinions when once formed His remark- 
able courtesy of manner made him always approachable. To 
those in sorrow he could bring comfort ; to those of doubting 
mind he was often a counsellor heart to heart, and his strong 
personal faith availed to lead them to the blessed sureties of 
Christian experience. He believed in the power of the truth 
to save any one. One of his most eloquent and effective ser- 
mons was written to convince and persuade an atheist nearly 
seventy years old, who, as a member of one of his congrega- 
tions in Maine, had expressed to him, with unfeigned sadness, 
the hopelessness of his mind concerning God and immortality. 
It was on the astronomical argument for the Christian religion. 
This sermon was subsequently repeated with marked eftect to 
many thousands in some of the largest cities of the Union. 

Probably the two shortest pastorates of Mr. Abbott devel- 
oped the largest results in religious awakening and in the per- 
sonal power of his ministry. These were at Nantucket and 
his last charge at Fair Haven. 

It was at the beginning of the winter of 1841-42 that Mr. 
Abbott and his family landed at Nantucket. This was then a 
compact village of 10,000 souls. There were but two evangeli- 
cal churches, the Congregational, and a small Methodist Church. 
The island was thirty miles out at sea, and the inhabitants had 
no communication with the mainland in winter. Many of the 
people were captains and mates of vessels. They were intelli- 
gent, with nothing to do, and were glad to be interested on any 



i8 

instructive theme. The church building was large, and the 
lecture-room, which was in fact the old church, would hold 
eight hundred people. Mr. Abbott saw his opportunity, and 
undertook to interest the people. " I made," he wrote once of 
this work, "a. great effort to embellish cvay address with bio- 
graphical, historical, or scientific illustrations which would 
instruct. My appeal was solely to reason, — most studiously 
avoiding all appeals to mere animal feeling." There had been 
a low state of piety in the church. Mr. Abbott appointed on 
the first Sunday a prayer-meeting in the lecture-room for Fri- 
day evening. In that first meeting there were three men and 
a dozen women, and only three of these could sing ; for in that 
capacious lecture-room the singers' seats were still retained. 
In a few weeks the house was full at those evening meetings 
and the aisles were crowded. " The bell tolled to tell the peo- 
ple there was no more room," was their familiar saying. There 
was so much apparent interest in religious matters that an in- 
quiry meeting was appointed at the pastor's house for Monday 
evening. Those were invited who, without being "inquirers" 
in the usual sense, yet desired personal instruction about relig- 
ious truth. About twenty were present. After two or three 
hours of conversation, three verses of the old tune of Hebron 
were given out. As the lines 

" Much of my time lias run to waste, 
And I perhaps am near my home," 

were sung, several were deeply affected, and a mighty work of 
the Spirit seemed to begin. It swept the whole town. Many 
an old and godless sea-captain took up the words of one of 
their number, " I nail the Bethel flag at the mast's head," 
during the steady interest which for eight months filled the 
old church to overflowing three times a week, besides the three 
Sabbath services. During all this time Mr. Abbott was alone. 
For eight months he did not see the face of a brbther clergy- 
man of his own denomination. The pressure was too great for 
him, and congestion of the brain threatened his life. It was a 
great harvest for one reaper. The church records report fifty- 
nine at one time who made public confession of Christ. In the 
two years and a half of his ministry at Nantucket, one hun- 
dred and seventy-two were received into the church. 



19 

A similar and even greater blessing was given to his last 
pastorate, in Fair Haven. His congregation, and the commu- 
nity generally, were of like character to those of Nantucket. 
The spirit of those earlier years seemed to return to him as he 
assumed the supply of this church, whose interest and courage 
for the Lord's work had in great measure declined. He was 
then engaged in the most exhausting literary work of his life, 
and felt that his duty to the church was fulfilled when the two 
best hours of the day had been devoted to the preparation 
of sermons, and the regular meetings of the church were 
attended. His sermons were revivified and generally rewritten 
for each Sunday. He seemed to plead with, rather than preach 
to, the people. His teaching, diversified and illustrated with 
new power, repeatedly urged them, as if it were the last day 
for all, to take Gad at His word, believe and be saved, love 
Christ and obey His commands. The church was soon crowded 
upon the Sabbath, and scores unused to observe the day were 
found in the congregation. The Sunday and week-day prayer- 
meetings, after a year of such appeals, filled the large audience- 
room. There was great increase of the Sunday school, but 
adults were especially awakened by the truth. There was 
intensified interest and proportionate stillness and solemnity 
in the meetings, to which only one evening more than usual in 
the week was devoted. The Holy Spirit's influence settled down 
upon the whole community, and was felt by those who did not 
come near the services. One hardened sinner, whose occupation 
was to watch the oyster-beds in the harbor, and who seldom 
even came to the shore, without any human agency, in his 
lonely watch at night, was so impressed with his sinfulness 
that he was forced, alone upon the water, to yield the struggle 
and cry for mercy. A well-known citizen, notorious for his 
wickedness, on a Sunday evening tremblingly rose to his feet, 
and saying that " a week before, all the money in the banks of 
New Haven could not have induced him to take this step," he 
confessed his need of a Saviour and implored help to obtain 
pardon. He was chosen by the Spirit for an effective witness 
for Christ. Inquirers for many weeks sought Mr. Abbott at his 
home at all hours of the day and evening. So greatly was the 
community moved, without special instrumentalities, that one 



solemn yet joyous Sabbath morning one hundred and six con- 
verts, mostly of adult age, crowded the centre aisles of the 
church to make profession of their faith. Twelve others united 
at the same time by letter in that goodly company of witnesses 
to the power of the truth in Jesus. The church, during all 
Mr. Abbott's ministrations and under those of his successor, 
became one of the most prosperous and fruitful in the region 
of New Haven. 

Those who enjoyed intimate friendship with Mr. Abbott 
knew that he coveted greatly "Oa?: poivcr of eloquence, as one of 
the preacher's best gifts. He longed above all things to attract 
and at t/ie same tunc persuade men to h^iie-ve. the truths of the 
gospel. He studied the qualities in men which drew others to 
hear them. " Men must be interested in what you have to 
say," he often repeated, ''or you cannot make them hear the 
truth or save them by it." " A pastor should concentrate all 
his energies, physical and mental, upon his sermons," was his 
frequent counsel to young men in the ministry. At a time 
when he was drawing every Sunday, in Howe Street Church, 
New Haven, audiences that filled every available foot in a spa- 
cious church, he thus expressed his own aims and motives in a 
letter to a young pastor whom he loved : " I tremble to hear — 
but hope that I am misinformed — that you have undertaken 
the superintendence of the Sabbath school. No mortal, unless 
he is tame as a sheep, can preach twice on the Sabbath, keep 
a Sabbath school, and attend a third service. Pardon me for 
reiterating that your great end and aim for the next five years 
should be to acquire fulpit eloquence. You need the whole 
concentrated energies of body and of soul for the two orations 
you must deliver every Sabbath. Whatever energy you give 
to any other work, you must detract from that. It is a terri- 
ble loss. I never knew a minister to succeed who attempted 
to do everything. You want to concentrate your energies on 
your two sermons, to preach with all your might. Heaven 
save me from hearing a minister preach in the afternoon who 
has followed up his morning sermon by teaching a Sabbath 
school ! 

" Pardon me for writing so earnestly. What the vvorld is now 
hungering for is able preaching. There is precious little of it. 



21 

It is not merely the writins; of the sermon : one needs to 
exhaust all the glowing energies of soul and body in the deliv- 
ery. Do not weaken your powers by diffusion. You cannot 
do everything, and it is a great deal better to be a powerful 
preacher than to scatter your strength all over the parish. 
Again I must apologize for thus writing. But I am sure, if you 
live to be sixty years of age, you will write to some young 
preacher just as I am now writing to you." 

Dr. Abbott was a conciliatory and sympathetic man in his 
personal relations in the parish and in society, but in his pulpit 
and on the lecture platform, where at some periods of his life 
he was very popular, he fearlessly expressed his convictions, 
and maintained his rights as a citizen. He was an outspoken 
antislavery man in the earliest years of that contest for free- 
dom in our land. He defended the poor and oppressed, and 
suffered for them, when to espouse the cause of the slave was 
a disgrace in the eyes of eminent men in the church. He was 
an ardent patriot, and used all the influence of his pulpit and his 
pen, during the Rebellion, to maintain the Republican party and 
the administration of President Lincoln in their desperate 
efforts to save the Union. 

Dr. Abbott was also an unwavering advocate of the demo- 
cratic and Scriptural principles of our Congregational polity 
and of the simple worship of the churches of our faith. He was 
a peacemaker in the divisions of churches and councils, where 
his apt words often, through their practical wisdom, solved diffi- 
culties and led to happy decisions. He loved the simplicity of 
our forms of worship, and had no sympathy with the mongrel 
liturgies which have crept into Congregational churches here 
and there, and blurred the distinctive character of their services, 
while they bewilder the irregular worshippers whom only in 
most instances they are designed to attract and please. In an 
article, published in the Cliristain Union after his death, Dr. 
Abbott appeals to his brethren for the old-time Congregational 
uniformity of worship, which in his view was unsurpassed by 
any other ritual in winning souls to Christ. He describes his 
own experience in ministering to churches which, each, had a 
different form : — 

" Not long since I preached in one of the most important of 



22 

our metropolitan churches. The edifice was splendid, the con- 
gregation large, fashionable, intelligent. I sat prayerfully, I 
ma)' say tremblingly, in a little anteroom, waiting for the last 
strokes of the tolling bell. One of the deacons came into my 
room, and smiling very blandly said, that perhaps, as I might not 
be familiar with the ritual which their pastor had introduced, he 
had brought me a printed programme. It was to me a formida- 
ble document. I had but about two and a half minutes to be- 
come familiar with this probably very admirable Congregational 
liturgy. But it destroyed all my peace of mind. I was in dis- 
may, and said to the deacon that I did not see how it would be 
possible for me, with so short a time for preparation, to adopt 
forms with which I was so totally unacquainted. He replied it 
was very simple ; that as I had the printed programme before 
me, all I had to do was to follow it. Not much to my comfort, he 
added that an inexperienced young man preached for them a few 
Sundays before, who became so embarrassed as to render the ser- 
vice quite amusing. 

"The bell ceased tolling, I entered the pulpit. How I suc- 
ceeded in working my way through the service I scarcely know : 
but this I do know, that I passed an hour and a half of quite 
severe suffering. 

" A few weeks after this a deacon came to my study to engage 
me to supply the pulpit in one of the leading churches of our 
land. He said he would hunt up an order of exercises which 
he would send me. My patience was exhausted. I said that 
if he would allow me to conduct the service according to the 
usages of our fathers, I should be happy to do so ; otherwise 
he must seek for a supply somewhere else. He replied, with a 
smile, that none would object to this. Since then I have inva- 
riably adhered to the time-honored custom of the Congrega- 
tional churches." 

It is not possible in these pages to describe at length Mr. 
Abbott's life as a teacher. Compelled by the state of his own 
health and that of Mrs. Abbott, he left Nantucket with his 
family in December, 1843. He immediately united with his 
brothers Jacob and Gorham in conducting a school for young 
ladies in New York City. Soon after Mr. Gorham Abbott 
separately organized the famous Spingler Institute, which, with 



the school of the Abbott brothers, were pioneer institutions for 
the higher education of girls in America. " Mr. Jacob " and 
" Mr. John," as they were ever distinguished by their pupils, 
continued their institution for about ten years. At no period 
of their lives, perhaps, did their work inspire more grateful love 
and respect. Their pupils came fi'om the most intelligent fam- 
ilies and from all parts of the country. They found a Christian 
home with their teachers. It was indeed a large family school, 
where all were treated and guided as daughters. Mr. Jacob's 
marvellous tact for imparting knowledge, to which unnumbered 
youth have since had cause to testify, and Mr. John's personal 
enthusiasm in impressing scenes of history, the facts of science, 
and the traits of character, as living pictures, upon the memory, 
were a rare combination for the success and efficiency of their 
school. Mr. John and his brother were already wielding an 
increasing influence by their pens, in American literature, and 
the products of their study were given in lectures and familiar 
instruction to their pupils. It was there that Mr. Abbott began 
writing the Life of Napoleon I, to which he owed much of his 
celebrity as an author. 

The three youngest children of Mr. Abbott's large family 
were born in New York. He was led to return to Maine with 
his family in 1853 by his love for his native State, and a desire 
to educate his oldest son at Bowdoin College. With the pur- 
pose of devoting himself to literary work, in which he was 
achieving remarkable success, he purchased one of the homes 
of his boyhood in Brunswick, where he resided several years, in 
view of the college grounds and in intimate association with the 
faculty of Bowdoin. Several of the faculty were his old instruc- 
tors, and he was himself a member of the Board of Trustees. 
No place could have been found so favorable for his literary 
toil. The large library of Bowdoin, exceedingly valuable in its 
historic collections, and the rare paintings in its art gallery, 
bequeathed by the Bowdoin family, were at his command. The 
cultured society of Brunswick cordially received him, with his 
wife and daughters, to their circles, and his own large and 
bright-faced group of children, full of vivacity and venture, had 
the freedom of a healthy country home. The life and charac- 
ter of Mr. Abbott's father were there reproduced in his own. 



24 

As he is remembered, not only by his children, but by citizens or 
students who were familiar with his home life, no one would 
wish to change a sentence in a description of his father, which 
Mr. Abbott somewhere gives, if it were applied to himself — 

" There was something in my father which commanded 
respect as well as love. . . . Whenever in the winter he appeared 
in the street with his sleigh, every boy felt at liberty to jump 
on or in. They would sometimes be clustered on his sleigh 
like a swarm of bees. He would stop to let the little fellows 
hitch their sleds to the runners. Often he would prolong his 
route to give them a ride. I never knew one who lived more 
constantly for others." 

In an interesting sketch of Mr. Abbott's published works by 
Rev. Edward Abbott, editor of the Literary World, there is 
given the first catalogue ever made of them. The figures 
preceding the titles indicate, generally speaking, the place 
belonging to each in chronological order of publication ; the 
figures following give the date of publication. 

I. Juvenile. 

2. The Child at Home. 1834. 

7. The School Boy. 1839. 

8. The School Girl. 1S40. 

9. A Visit to the Mountains. 1844. 

40-51. American Pioneers and Patriots. 12 vols. Daniel Boone, 
Miles Standish, De Soto, Peter Stuyvesant, Kit Carson, David Crockett, 
Captain Kidd, Paul Jones, La Salle, Columbus, George Washington, Ben- 
jamin Franklin. 1873-1S76. 

II. Ethical and Religious. 

I. The Mother at Home. 1S33. 

4. Fireside Piety. 1834. 

6. The Path of Peace. 1833. 

10. Memoir of Miss Elizabeth T. Read. 1847. 
21. Practical Christianity. 1S62. 

III. BlOGEArHICAL AND HISTORICAL. 

11. Napoleon at St. Helena. 1S55. 

12. Kings and Queens. 1855. 

13. 14. rhe History of Napoleon Bonaparte. 1855. 2 vols. 

15. Confidential Correspondence of the Emperor Napoleon. 1856. 
1 5. The French Revolution. 1859. 



2 5 

17-19- I't^ Monarcliies of Continental Europe. 1859. 3 vols 
Austria, Russia, Italy. 

22,23. History of the Civil War in America. 1S66. 2vols. '; 

24. The Romance of Spanish History. 1869. 

25. The History of Napoleon III. 1869. 

26. Prussia and the Franco-Prussian War. iS/l. 

27. History of Frederick the Great. 1S71. 

28. History of Christianity. 1872. 

29. History of Maine. 1875. 

30. Lives of the Presidents of tfie United States. 1876. 

31-39. 9 vols. Abbott's Illustrated Histories of Marie Antoinette, 
Josephine, Queen Hortense, Madame Roland, Joseph Bonaparte, Louis 
Philippe, Hernando Cortez, Louis XIV, Henry IV. 



IV. Miscellaneous. 

3. Scientific Tracts. 183- [probably]. Meteors, Man physically Con- 
sidered, Popular Superstitions, Northwest Passage, The Ocean. 
5. New England and her Institutions. 1835. 
20. South and North, i860. 



This list is not quite complete ; several juvenile books are 
omitted, notwithstanding more than fifty volumes are enumer- 
ated. It will be seen that Mr. Abbott's claims to authorship 
might, on the ground of the extent and variety of his volumes, 
without regard to their immense circulation, disturb the conceits 
of the flippant critics who have affected to ignore his influence 
in American literature. Others may, in careful review of his 
works, give Mr. Abbott just credit for what he has achieved of 
literary worth, and a particular history of his works. Here we 
give a record of the facts, the methods, and influence of his life 
and labors. All will accord to him the praise of rare industry, 
that could acomplish the literary work of between fifty and sixty 
published volumes, many of them numbering, each, over six 
hundred large octavo pages. To these might be added half as 
many more volumes that would perhaps contain the unknown 
number of magazine and newspaper articles, which he con- 
tinued to contribute till the last month of his life. There still 
would remain, to complete the sum of his life, ten years of the 
exhausting cares of a teacher, and the twenty-five unbroken 
years of faithful pastoral and ministerial labors for large congre- 
gations in New England. 



26 

Only in part would Mr. Abbott wish applied to himself the 
favorite words of his classmate Longfellow ; — 

'■ The Iieiaihls by gre^it men reached and kept 

Were not attained by sudden flight ; 

But they, while their companions slept, 

Were toiling upwards in the night." 

Yet none familiar with his writings, which touched upon 
almost every phase of history and every vital theme of human 
character, can justly withhold from him the large illustration of 

another's thought: — 

" No life 
Can be pure in its purpose and strong in its strife, 
And all life not be purer and stronger thereby." 

The responsibility of authorship is beyond measure when it 
reaches such a vast number of minds, and silently influences 
character and conduct by its portrayal of the events and deeds 
of the past. Mr. Abbott by his pen wrought far more than 
by his voice. It was, however, the same noble aim, 

" In whose pure sight all virtue doth succeed," 

which inspired both. 

It is the fashion of critics to search for what an author is not. 
Discoverers of this kind do not require candor or great intelli- 
gence. One could thus easily describe the fishes of the Ama- 
zon, without adding greatly to knowledge. It is also the weak- 
ness of critics to err in judgment. This may proceed from the 
assumed infallibility of their consciousness and of their intu- 
itions of all truth without original investigation. By one or two 
eminent and also hasty thinkers, Mr. Abbott was called, in a 
few instances, " a falsifier of history." The charge involved 
intentional misrepresentation. He could in all cases oppose 
the authority of others, as trustworthy in their opinions as his 
critics, to support his statements. He was, on the contrary, a 
conscientious author. In the Preface of his last volume he 
says, " I have written fifty-four volumes. In every one it has 
been my endeavor to make the inhabitants of this sad world 
more brotherly, — better and happier" He chose authorities 
which he judged good, and weighed the prejudices of others as 
he did his own. Yet in ten thousand difficult cases of judgment, 



27 

be were not human if hj diJ not sometimes err. His clisparaj;e- 
ments of men in his histories are few. He hated the venom 
of historic slurs. His condemnation of governments and men 
is open. He would not withhold commendation when it could 
truthfully be given. Once, lying becalmed in a sail-boat on 
Casco Bay, he suddenly turned to one near him and said, " I 
am greatly perplexed by two characters of whom I am writing, 
Mirabeau and Rousseau. I cannot understand the inexplica- 
ble wickedness of their acts, unless there was some hidden 
motive, which justified them, at least in their own sight." At 
another time, to one collecting materials for his use in an ac- 
count of a disastrous campaign in our civil war, he remarked, 
" Give him commendation where it is deserved, for he had 
everything against him." 

" In estimating a great man," says a strong, modern writer, 
"we should surely look to that wherein he was unique, individ- 
ual, exceeded his age, and added to it." When Mr. Abbott 
began to write the Life of Napoleon I, for which he has been 
so harshly judged, his countrymen were imbued with English 
hatred of the man whom that nation so long feared. Who does 
not know the strength of an Englishman's prejudice t There 
were few beside English histories of Napoleon in our land. 
The following epitaph on Napoleon, which was in vogue on 
Cape Cod forty years ago, is a fitting expression of the public 
sentiment that generally prevailed in regard to him, and which 
Mr. Abbott confesses he once shared : — 

" Beside this stone, beneath the sod, 
Lies Bonap.irte, the scourge of God, 
Virtue's detractor. Freedom's end, 
Hell's benefactor, Satan's friend. 
While here the tyrant sleeps in death, 
Let us thank God he took his breath." 

Such a sentiment would to-day be considered at least as far 
from truth as the eulogies which Mr. Abbott honestly wrote of 
Napoleon ! Few of the facts stated in that remarkable biogra- 
phy have been successfully controverted : the force of its argu- 
ments has been admitted by the clearest judicial minds. Their 
effect in guiding to a correct estimate of the moral character 
of Napoleon, and of his deeds, has often been deplored. For 



28 

that work and the equally elaborate and fascinating Life of 
Napoleon III, Mr. Abbott made the most careful investigation 
of authorities in some of the best libraries in America and 
France, and personally visited Paris under the reign of Louis 
Napoleon, with whom he freely conversed on the principles of 
the government, which he was then so successfully adminis- 
tering for France. The only recognition of his much-talked- 
of services to the family of Napoleon was a gold medal worth 
about fifty dollars, given in acknowledgment of the presenta- 
tion of a copy of the Life of Napoleon III to the Emperor. 

Aside from Mr. Abbott's motives in writing, he was, in the 
best years of his authorship, an unusually cai'eful vfr\\.&r. His 
remarkable perspicuity and beauty of style were the result of 
careful elaboration of his sentences. Much of Napoleon I was 
written three times, and nearly all of it twice. It was his habit 
carefully to elaborate a whole sentence before it was committed 
to paper. " Hard writing makes easy reading," was his daily 
motto. What he once wrote of his Lives of the Presidents 
was his repeated wish of all his larger works. " I wish," he 
says, " to make this the best book I have ever written " He 
was a vivid and 2\fiz>jS popular author. "Genuine history," 
we are truthfully told, " is brought into existence only when the 
historian begins to unravel, across the lapse of time, the living 
man, toiling, impassioned, intrenched in his customs, with his 
voice and features, his gestures and his dress, distinct and com- 
plete as he from whom we have just parted in the street." 
Mr. Abbott is unsurpassed in American literature in this qual- 
ity of a historian. He wrote history in a glow of mental 
action, at once a delight to himself and the source of magnetic 
power over his readers. This trait has been thus described by 
Dr. Lyman Abbott : " In his work of composition he was ac- 
customed to read up on the topic till he was thoroughly famil- 
iar with it. Then, closing his eyes, he would by a rare power 
of historic imagination transport himself into the scene which 
he was about to describe, and paint with his pen what he had 
seen in a mental vision. He had a rare power of abstraction, 
and, what is still more rare, a power of coming out of the past 
and returning to it again almost instantly. His study was 
always accessible ; his children came and went ; he never de- 



clincd himself to a caller ; and however busy he might be, I 
think he never regretted to see a friend. He would leave the 
death-bed of De Soto or the battle-field of Napoleon, answer a 
question about the household or give a greeting to a caller, and 
go back to his unfinished picture without losing from it a figure 
or a color." 

Mr. Abbott wrote for the people and easily commanded their 
attention. He was in the habit of keeping constantly before his 
mind as he wrote some one who fairly represented the intelli- 
gence and honest character of the households throughout the 
land, with which he had unfeigned sympathy and where his 
words had such charm for old and young. He was unable fully 
to meet the requests of publishers for his writings. His contri- 
butions to magazines or papers were never rejected. The 
writer of this article had this remarkable statement from Mr. 
Abbott himself, only five years ago. His works had a large sale. . 
Of the first volume of the History of the Civil War in Amer- 
ica 100,000 copies were sold by subscription. The publishers 
were embarrassed at the unremunerative price, on account 
of the depreciation of the national currency, and repressed the 
circulation of the second volume. The Harpers of New York 
repeatedly affirmed the popularity of Mr. Abbott's book. His 
Napoleon /gave to their new monthly magazine an immense 
impetus. The editor of that magazine, after The Life of 
Frederick the Great, which appeared anonymously at the 
author's request, had been completed, gave the most emphatic 
testimony to the rare and invaluable power which Mr. Abbott 
possessed of attracting and interesting the people. His last 
work, though unassociated with his name or his fame, had 
inceased their readers by thousands. 

It was diligence, not haste, it was intense labor, not genius, 
that accomplished such large results in Dr. Abbott's life. He 
did not work irregularly, but rather continuously. He did not 
turn night into day, nor wait for moods and impulses to mental 
exertion. For twenty of his most fruitful years, he spent from 
eight to ten hours daily in study and writing. The interrup- 
tions to this incessant labor were few ; its monotony was 
relieved by change of subject and composition. He usually 
gave the first two hours to his sermons ; then the large historic 



30 

subject from four to six hours awakened his intense interest, 
while the newspaper or magazine article or a friendly letter 
varied the theme and style of expression. Three or four hours 
of delis^htful talk with his family, or in social calls, closed the 
day, and he early sought sleep. His only exercise of walking 
or driving was very hght. He ate but little, and his chief 
recuperative was sleep, of which he would never wilfully deprive 
himself. Some of his best work was done two hours before the 
breakfast of his household. Mr. Abbott kept no diary or jour- 
nal of his thoughts and labors ; but this very incomplete sketch 
of his literary life cannot have better or more interesting 
proof of its statements than brief extracts from private letters 
to the writer in the year 1870. Many similar confirmations 
could be drawn from the letters of other years. 

April 14, 1870. — "As to myself, I am very busy indeed. I 
am writing a monthly article for Harper on Frederick the 
Great ; also the History of Louis XIV, four chapters of which 
I have sent to the Harpers. For four months I have been act- 
ing pastor of the Second Congregational Church here. [Fair 
Haven.] Every other Sabbath afternoon I preach a sermon 
upon the History of Christianity. These sermons I rewrite 
with much care. They draw a full house. I have been very 
busy this week writing a sermon entitled ' A Plea in Favor of 
attending Public Worship.' " 

June 13, 1870. — "I have the full charge of not a small parish, 
with all its pulpit and parochial labors. It is a rule with me 
to prepare one new sermon every week. In addition to this I 
prepare a monthly article of twenty pages for Harper s Maga- 
zine, and am writing two books, one, the Hisiorij of Louis 
XIV, and the other. The History of tite Christian Religion. 
Last week I wrote the tenth chapter of this History. I have 
sent the first four chapters of the History of Louis XIV to the 
Harpers, and have four other chapters completed." 

After such a week as this, Mr. Abbott again wrote : " Yes- 
terday I preached all day to unusually large audiences, for our 
congregation is continually increasing. This morning [Mon- 
day] I rested by going into my study at seven o'cl.ick and work- 
ing without intermit^^ .^n unti' one. In that time I prepared 
six closely written pages upon Louis XIV. It is my rule, with 



31 

scarcely an exception, to go into my study as soon as I rise in 
the morning, and write until breakfast. I then continue to 
write until dinner-time at half past one. In the afternoon and 
evening I read up. I have nothing whatever to do with house 
or barn, but am merely a boarder in my house. Your mother 
spends the whole morning in my study with me. Sometimes 
I dictate to her, sometimes I write in abbreviations, and she 
copies. I shall be sixty-five years old next September. Though 
my health is wonderfully good, I cannot e.xpect to preach very 
much longer. I hope to lay up enough to give me a modest 
competency in my old age. I do not expect any vacation this 
summer, but must work with all my might. I think that in 
my advancing years I can endure sedentary habits which would 
kill a young man." 

The following estimate, by Dr. Leonard Bacon, of the suc- 
cess of Mr. Abbott's literary life is here reproduced from his 
funeral address : " The aim of his many and various historical 
works has been to popularize knowledge. In this he has suc- 
ceeded as no other writer. The books he has written have 
had millions of readers. His Mother at Home, the earliest 
of them, has been a blessing in households too many to be 
numbered. His college classmates, Longfellow, Hawthorne, 
Cheever, are eminent in literature. Not one of them has had — 
perhaps not all of them together have had — so many millions of 
readers, and in so many languages of Christian and heathen 
nations, as he. Some of Hawthorne's stories, many of Long- 
fellow's poems, may be counted among the classics of the 
world's literature when the histories which he has written 
shall have been superseded ; but he has made his mark broad 
and deep upon the living generations, and that diffusion in 
which he has been so great an instrument will have its effect 
on coming ages." 

When Dr. Abbott had reached the age of seventy, he had 
expended nearly all his bodily strength in the labors which 
this incomplete record of his life can only indicate to those 
acquainted with ministerial and literary toil. He soon suc- 
cumbed to the decay of bodily powers, while the lamp of his 
mind still burned brightly. He had less disposition to leave 
his home, even for the slight exercise of walking to which he 



was accustomed. Whenever it was possible he was employed 
in his study on articles for papers and magazines, or the vol- 
umes for which editors and publishers made urgent request. 
He clung to his pen till the last month of a sickness of fifteen 
months. He was deeply affected by the death, at his own home, 
in March, 1876, of the wife of his deceased brother Gorham, 
Mrs. Rebecca S. Abbott. She was a lady of rare intelligence 
and piety and virtue, whose memory is revered by thousands 
in our land. Her departure seemed to open the way into the 
unknown mysteries which his spirit longed to penetrate. His 
thoughts were thenceforth much upon his own release, and he 
began to gather up all the loose threads of his life. His days 
with the family now closed with the setting sun. His nights 
were long and his rest broken. Many hours of the day were 
spent upon his bed. Muscular decay was visible in all his 
movements. With no special disease, he suffered, often acutely, 
in different parts of his body. He would lose several days at 
a time from his work. A lady sat at his bedside and wrote for 
him as he dictated his last volume on Benjamin Franklin. His 
Reminiscences of Childhood and a few articles for religious 
papers were written with pencil, at intervals of night or day, 
on a tablet which was ever at his side. His mind was at these 
times remarkably clear, and the desire to write irresistible. 
Many letters of farewell were thus written to his relatives and 
friends. They were unexaggerated pictures of the tranquillity 
and peace, the hope, the sweet content, or the rapture of his 
mind, as, with unfaltering trust, he waited for his Heavenly 
Father's permission to join the throngs of the redeemed. So 
extremely weak was he several months before the last, that he 
many times awaked in the morning feeling that it must be his 
last day on earth. Thus he lingered, every want ministered to 
by the loving hands of his wife and daughter and his devoted 
physician. It was a precious privilege of distant members of 
his family, and of his relatives and former associates, to visit 
his chamber. There were no shadows there. The peace of^ 
his soul entered the hearts of all who heard his words. They 
shared the joy of his heavenly hope as they parted. Old pupils, 
classmates, parishioners, and friends, near to his home or from 
far-off States and countries, sent him words of encouragement 



33 

and gifts of love ere he took his journey toward the eternal 
city. It is not often that one who has spoken to thousands so 
eloquently of heaven and immortality, when in the full tide of 
life, has been able so fully to testify at the last ebb, with clear 
vision beyond Time's narrow bound, to the surety of all the 
promises in Christ. 

It was said by the physician of an eminent English divine, 
" His happiness in the prospect of death prolonged his life many 
months," One day, as Mr. Abbott, earnestly looking into Dr. 
Stone's face, asked, " Doctor, why do I not die .'' " he was 
answered, " Mr. Abbott, you are too happy to die." It was a 
new thought to him, and for many weeks those words were 
repeated by the patient to cheer his friends and himself in the 
long waiting. 

Of many private letters which he wrote or dictated, none 
will better indicate his condition during the last months of his 
sickness, and the consolations of his soul, than one to his 
nephew, the Rev. Edward Abbott : — 

" Tliere is sublimity in this midnight silence, nnd there is indescribable 
rapture in the full conviction that, at any hour, a retinue of angels may 
come to bear me to my heavenly home. I am every day drawing nearer my 
departure, slowly, and yet by steps which I can easily estimate. I am gener- 
ally free from all pain. I do not well see how any one can be more happy 
than I am now. The past is gone forever. The battle is fought. All 
care seems to have vanished from my mind. The future is opening before 
me with visions of beauty, grandeur, bliss, which no pen can describe. 

" I cannot tell you, dear E., with what rapture I anticipate the arrival 
of the angelic band to take me home. I have no doubt that there is such 
2l place as heaven, the metropolis of God's limitless empire. Its gorgeous 
towers rise faraway in the abysses of space. Who can imagine the grandeur 
of the journey, in the ' chariot' with angel companionship from earth to 
heaven ? 

" My sickness has been a wonderfully pleasant one. It is now, as I have 
mentioned, midnight, yet my room seems full of sunshine. I am more 
than happy. But when I try to express in words what I feel, I am painfully 
impressed witli the poverty of language. Three times, night before last, 
I thought that I was going. It seems to me that my mind was never more 
active. I have never a doubt of the reality of the religion of Jesus, which 
I was taught from the lips of my sainted parents, and which for a lifetime 
I have urged upon others. It is exactly the religion I want. It has guided 
and blessed me during my pilgrimage of threescore years and eleven, and 
in these sublime hours, when I am just entering upon eternal blessedness 
it has indeed taken from death its sting." 
3 



34 

A month before his release Dr. Abbott's sufferings became 
acute, and yet he comforted himself and others with hope. 
" In a few days, perhaps a few hours," he said, " I shall he hap- 
pier than any man living." He refused the prescribed opiates 
five days before the last, saying that he preferred to suffer. His 
wife and two daughters were constantly near him from this time. 
On Wednesday he sent a message of love to all his children. 
On Thursday he recognized his sainted mother's presence, and 
said the angels were calling him, and from that time their 
companionship did not leave him. He often mentioned their 
names. On Saturday evening one, noticing the last change, 
said to him, " Death has come." He looked up with a glad 
surprise. He had often felt nearer to death than he did then. 
But he began to breathe more heavily, then more gently, and 
without a struggle his spirit dropped its burden, and entered 
into the joy of his Lord. 

Dr. Abbott passed away just after midnight, Sunday, a.m., 
June 17. Sorrow rested on the whole community of Fair 
Haven. The stores and saloons were all spontaneously 
closed on the afternoon of his burial. The people gathered to 
a quiet, simple service in the Second Church of Fair Haven, 
on Tuesday, the 19th. It was the scene of his last consecrated 
labors in the ministry. Every period of his active life was 
represented in those last rites. During the forenoon hundreds 
had come to take their last look at his peaceful face ; his fam- 
ily also had then parted with him. There were left only sym- 
pathetic and tender words to be spoken by Dr. Bacon and the 
pastor, Rev. Mr. Hovey. Two or three simple hymns were 
sung, the'-- was a prayer, and the remains were borne by his 
nephews and sons-in-law out of the church. A large golden 
sheaf of wheat, with the inscription, " The last tribute of affec- 
tion for Mr. John, from one of his loving pupils," was laid upon 
the coffin. A few flowers with ferns and vines from the woods 
had also been scattered about it. The hearts of all were 
silently blessing his memory, as of the just. Accompanied 
only by his family to the cemetery in New Haven, with a 
prayer by one of his sons, his body was committed to the 
grave, whence the sadness of death seemed almost to have 
been dispelled by Him who hath conquered death for His 
redeemed. 



35 

With all that Dr. Abbott accomplished in authorship, so 
excellent that his books have been transcribed into many lan- 
guages and dispersed among peoples of both hemispheres, his 
most intimate friends are ready to say that his influence as a 
Christian, whether by word or pen or personal character, was 
his highest aim and the best work of his life. " I am most 
grateful for the success of my religious works," he said to the 
writer in his last interview with him. " My History of Chris- 
tianity has greatly interested my Japanese friends. They 
have carried it to Japan, and will try to circulate it among those 
thirty-three millions who are to be converted into a Christian 
nation." " I feel, as I lie here waiting for my release, that I 
desire no earthly good like that of pleading with men to accept 
salvation through Christ." 

The weaknesses and faults in his life were those which arose 
from an impulsive and generous nature, and from the exactions 
of his work upon nervous strength. He had too great confi- 
dence in human nature, and sometimes spoke to the public or to 
his own community through his pen as if all were his personal 
friends and as high-minded as himself in their motives and 
principles. Thus he occasionally betrayed himself to public 
criticism where only his best friends should have known his 
thoughts, or witnessed his gratification from the favor of those 
in power. He had great self-restraint under provocations, and 
was usually silent when he was sorely tried by criticism or re- 
proach. " He has left the world poorer," wrote one of Mr. Ab- 
bott's former associates, " We shall go the more easily because 
he is there." 

There was a lovely light from his life in the home circle. A 
devoted husband and father, no man was ever more generous 
to his children, none ever lived more unselfishly for their hap- 
piness. He supported, in great measure by his literary labor, 
a large family in the station to which his success as an author 
had raised him. It was a tremendous venture to depend on an 
author's hardly-earned royalties, and the usually stinted remu- 
neration of exhausting toil of the brain. It continued to be an 
imperious necessity, whose service only love could make light. 
Publishers indeed grow rich, but authors are generally kept 
poor. Few men have come into honor through keener trials 
of heart and mind and body in his life of incessant toil. 



36 • 

In no respeet is he ever known to have failed in personal in- 
tegrity and Christian honor. Blameless in youth, none could 
reproach him in age. In him was the soul of courtesy, — un- 
selfish love for men ; it continued with him to the last. It 
never won the heart so much as on his dying bed. The hum- 
ble loved his recognition and his conversation, free from ped- 
antry, as much as the cultured and powerful. His service to 
God and his fellow-men had left its impress of gentleness, dig- 
nity, and integrity of bearing towards all, and it was a purified 
and lovely character which enabled him to welcome heavenly 
scenes and fellowship ere earth had passed away from his sight. 



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